National Ice Cream Day

Today is national ice cream day, a holiday proclaimed by President Ronald Reagan as the third sunday of the month of July. That would be today. Eat ice cream.

From �the Kitsap Sun:

What are the top five flavors of ice cream consumed in the United States? Vanilla (30 percent), chocolate (10 percent), butter pecan (4 percent), strawberry (3.7 percent) and chocolate chip mint (3.2 percent) according to National Eating Trends Services.

Here are some more ice cream facts:

The largest volume of ice cream and frozen desserts in the nation is produced in California.

The ice cream industry generates more than $21 billion in annual sales.

About 9 percent of all of milk produced in the U.S. is used to make ice cream.

Statistics from 2007 show ice cream is the largest share of the frozen dessert market, 62.4 percent. Low-fat and nonfat ice cream, weigh in at 25 percent, followed by frozen yogurt: 4.4 percent, water ice: 4.1 percent and sherbet: 3.4 percent with “other” coming in at 0.8 percent.

Novelties like ice cream sandwiches, fudge sticks and fruit juice bars that do and don’t contain dairy ingredients were valued at $2.4 billion in 2004. The top flavor in novelties mirrors the number one flavor in ice cream: Vanilla, followed by fudge.

Those are all boring factoids. What’s your favorite flavor? Mine is Chocolate Mint Chip.